realisation

To begin the production process, I revisited the fundaments of my book: a family cookbook memoires made as a love letter for Indonesian (food)culture in collaboration mostly with my mom. Even though I had narrowed down my recipe archive already, it still encompassed too many and too diverse dishes. With this in mind, I decided to stray away from establishing firmly demarcated categories for my chapters, whether this be spiciness, dish origins or generational status. Rather, when creating the general structure for the cookbook, I decided upon five 'acts', each representing one family member who taught me a lot about Indonesian culture through food. These acts are distinct but hold interrelated themes.

The first act is about my opung (grandmother) and I choose the Batak dish saksang to represent her. Saksang is a dish where you prepare a pig in its own blood. This dish reminds me so much of my opung, as it was always prepared at special ceremonies such as her 70th birthday. My opung even held pigs of her own which she treated and fed like royals. She prepared their food in a huge pot above a fire in her garden. The dish belongs to the Batak tribe to which my opung belongs.

For the second act, I choose the dish kerak telor to represent my mama tua. Mama tua literally translates to 'old mother' and this is what I call my mother's oldest sister. Mama tua lives in Jakarta and every time I'm in that metropolitan city I'm only eating streetfood. Kerak telor is a dish from the Betawi people; they are the descendants of the people who inhabited Jakarta (the colonial name was Batavia) from the 17th century onwards. Kerak telor, thus, also represents multicultural Jakarta and its colonial history.

My dad is not Indonesian, but Dutch. However, he really was in love with the archipelago. When my dad retired, he decided to go to Indonesia and just explore the islands by bike. That's when he met my mother. I choose klappertaart to represent him. First of all, because it's a cake, and my dad was a sweet tooth - we used to bake together all the time when I was a kid. But more importantly, klappertaart is a dish for which you need Indonesian ingredients but a Dutch preparation method. It's the perfect mix of both cultures which is why it makes me think of my dad so much.

The fourth act is dedicated to my mother. Daun ubi tumbuk is, again, a Batak dish. It's made of cassava leaves and coconut milk. However, in the Netherlands leaves of the cassava plant are rarely sold. So instead, my mother used kale (boerenkool) from our garden and it would always taste just as good. My mother helped me a lot with this book by sharing her recipes (she doesn't write anything down but she knows everything).

Kakak betekent zus. When I was little, my sister used to take me around the island of Samosir and afterwards we would have a plate of mie gomak. It's also called the Batak spaghetti because the noodles are very thick and look like spaghetti. Mie gomak is super spicy but even though the extreme spiciness I always enjoy every bite. It's my sister's favorite dish.

Title: makanlah nasi!
Subtitle: a family cookbook memoires

I choose an Indonesian title and it translates to: "eat rice!". It's an inviting phrase my Indonesian family would say to guests. To me, it represents the hospitality of the Indonesian people and the collectivity that is characteristic of them.

Contents
1. ENTREE
Menu (contents page)
2. MAIN
Act One: opung
- Saksang
Act Two: mama tua
- Kerak telor
Act Three: papa
- Klappertaart
Act Four: mama
- Daun ubi tumbuk
Act Five: Lya
- Mie gomak
3. DESSERT
Nawoord

As for the introduction, I decided to include parts of the essay that I had written for the critical studies minor. I feel that since the point of writing the essay, my intentions have remained generally consistent, serving as a sincere preface to set the tone for the cookbook.

The next step was to translate the feeling of homeliness into the book. That's why, for my colour palette, I used colour hues from my family archive. I wanted natural, warm colours as I wanted to give my book a natural feeling. I set some intentions for the design by stating a couple of themes:

Themes: INTIMATE / HOMELY / COLLECTIVIST / NOSTALGIC

Font
For my page headings, I wanted a font that would work with food as a theme but also with the drawings that I made. Therefore, I used the font 'herb' by Just Another Foundry. For the other texts, I used the font 'bodoni 72' because that font has a nice book feel and works with my themes.

Cover Page
I went through multiple iterations of the cover page design before settling on the final one. The first design pictures three Indonesian women with the title 'decolonial table', which was the initial title of the book. However, I thought the cover should be more abstract as the contents are already so personal and I wanted to place my book in the now, instead of making it look 'primitive'. Thus, for the second design I already had the title 'makanlah nasi!' but I laser engraved this on semi-transparent red acrylate. This was way too abstract when laser-cut. Also, the size was way too big so I decided to size it down to 148 x 148mm which is perfectly manageable. The final design pictures a karbau or a water buffalo. The water buffalo is used throughout Indonesia to cultivate rice fields. To me, they belong in the views of Samosir, grazing in the wet soil besides Lake Toba.

Paper and material
I test printed the contents of my book on BioTop 120 grams. BioTop is an uncoated paper type, cream-coloured, chlorine-free bleached and contains no optical whiteners. I thought the cream-coloured paper would work well with my warm design which it did. However, I noticed that 120 grams is a bit too heavy to make super clean folds (needed to make a good leporello). That's why I also printed on BioTop 90 grams, which turned out quite well. Finally, I test printed on Paperwise, a completely recycled paper type with visible fibres which gives the paper a natural look. With this paper, the results turned out the best and it matched my themes the best.

Themes: INTIMATE / HOMELY / COLLECTIVIST / NOSTALGIC